Beginning again

The squares on my December running schedule have all been crossed out for over a week, so I guess it's time to tally up the miles and post a 2010 in review/goals for the new year post.

December was my third-highest mileage month of the year, which I think is surprising, because in my mind, the schedule that I followed was limiting the mileage by giving cross-training and rest a high priority. December's miles bring my total running miles of the year to 500, which is a personal high. The most before that was 350 in 2009.

In addition to more running than ever before, 2010 brought a lot of new experiences for me. Mainly, I trained for and ran a half-marathon, which is the longest distance I've run in my life. I also ran in my second, third, and fourth trail races and began exploring technical trails in nearby parks and have really come to love trail running. I've also learned to incorporate weight-training and rest into my running schedule with very positive results. I even (kind of) set a new 5K PR.

I'm happy to be able to begin the new year on such a good note, because I feel that I'm in better shape than ever before and am just feeling good in general. I think that I'm responding well to the combination of running, weight-training, and rest that I've been following since November and have begun a Wii program (EA Sports Active 2 Personal Trainer) to work more on total fitness. I might have to tweak the intensity of that program since last week it made me too sore to fit all of my runs in, but I'm looking forward to a great year of fitness.

I don't have any definite goals that I'm setting for myself, but one thing that I am definitely thinking a lot about is possibly running a full marathon this year. I'm going to continue slowly working the mileage up to a good base and see if I can maintain it. If I can do that without injury, I might just sign up for 26.2 in the fall...